As a way of celebrating the holiday season, we've put up a special, limited time bundle with four Gold & Glory products!
So what's inside? Let's take a look!
Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons: The acclaimed core book, a toolkit to play classic fantasy dungeon adventures with close to no preparation, with Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. It features a random character generator that actually works, two new arcane backgrounds, setting rules for dungeons, simplified encumbrance, LOTS of new monsters and magic items, the Dungeon Deck system, and the titular Seven Deadly Dungeons: seven dungeon adventures that you can play dozens of times, and will always be new and engaging, thanks to the randomizing of the Dungeon Deck system.
Gold & Glory - Old School Gaming in Savage Worlds: A simple guide to enrich and empower the old school style in your Savage Worlds games - wether you're playing Gold & Glory or not! Topics such as player skill vs character skill, risk/difficulty/reward, linear and non-linear adventuring, attrition, and Gold & Glory as a toolbox for YOUR games!
Gold & Glory - Solo, GMless and One-on-One Adventures: The best-selling guide to play Gold & Glory games in a variety of modes. Also includes the Abstract Clues system, which you can use in ANY type of game, and rules for hiring various types of henchmen, a useful resource for solo and one-on-one games!
The evil count has kidnapped lady Marianne, and it's up to you to rescue her!
This simple premise gets you right into the adventure, a fantasy/horror scenario which can easily be dropped into your regular campaign, or be played as an easygoing one-shot.
So what's cool about it? Several things, actually!
It's got LOTS OF RANDOM! Every time you play, things are always different.
It's easy to use for solo or GMLess play. Just make your character(s) and follow the instructions on the page.
It's got a simple back story that can be literally explained in four words (go rescue Lady Marianne), meaning it's perfect for games that focus on learning the rules, or just want a couple hours of fun bashing monsters in a gothic dungeon.
It's a testament to the trappings concept when applied to creatures, with several monsters being simple reskin of stat blocks found in the core Savage Worlds book.
It is a horror/fantasy rescue mission with a strong Castlevania vibe, including several items that you can find which change how you interact with some of the monsters and traps.
At a personal level, I'm very happy with this little project because I was able to code a bit of html (with close to no experience before this!), and translate the random generation mechanics of Gold & Glory into an electronic thing.
This "translation" was not "literal". The electronic random generation lacks all the subtle intricacies of using a deck of cards like the tabletop version... because I wasn't able to code those, of course. When using the actual Gold & Glory dungeon deck system, you can't get the same result twice in the same room, for example, nor can you encounter the same hazard two times before consuming the whole deck and shuffling it again.
But what is lacking in subtlety is made up for in variety: I was able to put way more hazards, treasures and features than what I could usually fit into a regular pen and paper G&G dungeon: a huge amount of horrors and wonders, and several chained events and McGuffins that interact with each other.
This time we'll take a look at the line of "deadly dungeon hosts" adventures: dungeon scenarios designed by special guest authors, based on the Gold & Glory Dungeon Template. Let's see who they are and what they've come up with!
The Garden of Bones was created by a powerful necromancer to be given as a present to a love interest of theirs. Once the gift was rejected, the necromancer turned the garden into a place of nightmares and horrific creations they built to externalize their frustration. It fell into obscurity after the ages passed away, and it became a myth. Now, a scholar with sinister interests has located a map they believe to lead to this mythical garden and desires to be taken there to admire the garden and possibly collect the legendary Ghost Lotus.
The Garden of Bones is a legendary place covered in mystery and peril, full of dark wonders and incredible treasures. Sages have talked about it for centuries but very few have ever discovered its location. But now an expedition to this mystic place is being organized. This Gold & Glory dungeon adventure features unique rewards and a very dangerous environment, a worthy challenge for truly Heroic characters!
Due to its theme and features, The Garden of Bones can be dropped into any fantasy, grimdark, or sword & sorcery campaign, including settings such as Lankhmar or Beasts & Barbarians.
The art for this one was made by Matteo Ceresa, who tried to homage Mike Mignola's style.
Families of grubby little goblins frequently make their homes in the mountains to the west, where they breed like vermin, and hoard stolen treasure in their deep, dark caves. Brave adventures sometimes seek out these underground warrens, purging the goblin infestation and reclaiming their ill-gotten riches. Several weeks ago, the famous paladin Molgrim Silverblade led his companions on a holy mission to root out a large band of goblins. Only one survivor returned from the doomed expedition, and he had been hideously mutilated and driven half-mad.
Hightree Warren is a perilous dungeon, populated by vicious goblins, and filled with traps and other nasty surprises. Set in the world of Saga of the Goblin Horde and written by Savage Worlds guru Richard Woolcock.
“It’s my gold, I tell you! All mine! I will never give it up! Never! Bah, humbug!” —Ebenezer’s last words.
The cruel, wealthy money-lender Ebenezer has passed away. Somewhere inside his mansion, or below it, there must be treasure beyond imagination! Who cares if people speak of ghostly apparitions and other strange events... Ebenezer’s Gold is a festive-special dungeon adventure, and the second written by Richard Woolcock!
A fallen Strider, a shameful secret left buried for centuries, and a party of heroes who dare enter a long-forlorn castle on a solitary mountain peak in search of the fabled Ring Of Yore and, maybe, the truth.
The Halls of the Damned is a Castlevania inspired dungeon adventure written by game designer and novelist Andrea Mollica, the same author of Guardians of Sol-Tau. The adventure has a strong horror/gothic theme, and can be adapted to any Gothic Horror setting where you may have heroes storming a castle infested with goulish monsters, werewolves, ghosts and vampires!
Maximillian Ernesto Cravenpeter Esquire the Mediocre, a powerful archmage, is publicly retiring and is holding an auction for his eclectic and exotic items. Maximillian, a powerful wizard in no way overcome with paranoia and petty concerns, has always had little trust or respect for anyone who would covet his things. As a security measure he has contacted the Green Feather agents—fae mesmerists, who have agreed to hold the auction in a dream within Maximillian’s psyche. This works flawlessly, protecting both the clients and the auctioned objects, as long as no deep psychic disturbances exist. A renowned wizard named Max the Mediocre has no psychogenic trauma, obviously.
Cravenpeter's Dream Auction is a special adventure written by OSR master Courtney Campbell that can be played as an alternative to the usual Carousing, Magic Research, and Offerings to Solis... assuming the heroes have enough gold to make bids at Cravenpeter’s Dream Auction!
For those who don't know, Courtney Campbell runs one of the most interesting OSR blogs out there: Hack & Slash, and is also the author of the cool Megadungeon 'zine.
The art in this one is by Courtney Campbell himself, with some coloring by our usual layout artist Matteo Ceresa!
Gold & Glory - Seven Deadly Dungeons was my first project I designed completely by myself, crashing together my love for Savage Worlds and OSR games.
From the blurb:
Welcome to a world of legendary heroes and daring feats or, more probably, to a dishonorable story of ill-fated treasure hunters who’ll soon bite off more than they can chew… unless they manage to return home with enough gold to carouse wildly until their next expedition!
Gold & Glory is a toolbox, to enjoy the Fast, Furious and Fun rules of Savage Worlds in a game of classic dungeon exploration, in the spirit of the Old School Renaissance, with no other book needed besides Savage Worlds Adventure Edition.
It is ideal to play one night games as well as longer campaigns and allows you to play with no preparation at all. Gold & Glory: Seven Deadly Dungeons includes:
A random character generation system to start playing in no time
New equipment for dungeon delvers
Magic and Miracles Arcane Backgrounds to create classic arcane characters in the FFF spirit of Savage Worlds
Downtime activities such as Carousing and Magic Research, tied to the Experience system, to keep your heroes busy between one expedition and the next
The Dungeon Deck system to generate your dungeons while you play
Seven deadly self-generating dungeons for your heroes to explore!
More than 30 new monsters to face and a heap of magic items to loot!
All Gold & Glory interior art and covers are by ink master Francesco Saverio Ferrara (check his works on Facebook!), and we also used some maps by acclaimed map artist Dyson Logos to complement the layout.
Gold & Glory has received a widely favorable reception, with several dozens of five-star reviews, both for the SWDeluxe and SWADE version.
Even now that two years have passed since release, I must admit I'm really happy and satisfied with how the random character creation system works. That, and the Dungeon Deck that generates thematic dungeons while you play, are two of my most accomplished designs, in my view.
Design aside, I'm also happy with the variety of the seven dungeon adventures I squeezed into the book, a mix of vanilla fantasy, dark fairy tale, and horrific visions. They range from the rather classic swamp temples of the Serpent Shrines and the abandoned dwarven city of the Dwarf Prince Demise, to the Moldy Caves, infested with undead bandits and moldy abominations, to the non-euclidean Witch House with its grim fairy tale vibes, to the verdant, puzzling nightmare that is the Green Maze, to the steampunkish, ooze-infested Iron Vat, to the Hellraiser tribute that is the Halls of Pain.
And thanks to the Dungeon Deck system, each of those will play different every time, with a unique map and always new combinations of events, hazards and rewards.
The Gold & Glory book is also expanded with the following:
Solo, GMLess and One-on-One Adventures: A supplement with rules, options and suggestions to play with no GM. The obvious complement to a system that is already prepless on its own! It also features an Abstract Clues system and options for hired Allies, which can be used in any type of fantasy games!
The Old School Gaming Guide: A guide aimed at explaining the core concepts of “Classic Dungeon Games” and how they interact with the Savage Worlds rules through the Gold & Glory book!
The Dungeon Template: simple empty form organized with all the infos and tables of the G&G dungeon format, which you can fill with your own unique creations.
The Character Sheet Pack: A character sheet specifically designed to make character creation ultra fast, with checkboxes for all the main results of the G&G random creation system.
And then there's a whole lot of dungeon adventures written by guest authors such as Diogo Nogueira, Richard Woolcock, Andrea Mollica, and Courtney Campbell... but the "deadly dungeon hosts" will be the subject of another post!
